“No one slays like Gaston, no one flays like Gaston! After hunting some beast, no one preys like Gaston!”

A little vignette featuring everyone’s favorite misunderstood French hunter Gaston from Beauty & The Beast notoriety. A while back I came up with the concept of using Gaston in a variety of humorous scenarios, proclaiming that “no one [past tense verb] like Gaston!” — one of which being a scenario where he succeeds in killing the Beast.

The interior of this shot is actually the set for the White Rabbit‘s house in my forthcoming stop-motion Alice in Wonderland video, using the fireplace from the scenes I filmed for the inside of the Duchess’ house. To get the fireplace to glow (along with Lumiere’s candles), in Photoshop I superimposed parts of pictures of LEGO LED candles I built in 2016, then used various blending options with layer masks.

The most difficult challenge was making the Beast head mounted on the plaque: the various sections of the plaque are held onto the chimney with small dabs of sticky tack. I keep sticky tack close by to the photography table, as I use little pieces of the stuff to aid my characters and props in stop-motion animation.